Black Friday is a goldmine for affiliate marketers. Before you get started, here’s everything you need to have a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
On 21st August 2019, we joined forces with affiliate marketing agency Silverbean to deliver a webinar exploring what retailers can do to make the most out of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. Commission Factory’s Client Services Director, Sophie Metcalfe was joined by Nichola Howard, Senior Affiliate Marketing Manager at Silverbean, to discuss what brands can do now to achieve maximum success come Australia’s biggest shopping weekend.
There’s no ignoring it - Black Friday has arrived in Australia. The world-famous shopping day, which started in the US, is more than just viral videos of crazed shoppers fighting over the last TV in Walmart. In fact, it’s one of the biggest weekends in every retailer’s diary.
In our poll on our webinar, 81% of the people reported that they have not yet started planning for Black Friday, but do not fear, there is no better time than to start now. We’ve included some of the top tips from the webinar below on how to run a successful Black Friday affiliate campaign.
Start Planning
It may seem a million miles away, but this big weekend is closer than you think. So, what are you doing to prepare?
The sooner you can start your Black Friday planning, the better. At Silverbean and at Commission Factory, we work with clients to start planning from August and create simple timelines to make sure everything falls in place ahead of the big shopping weekend.
If you haven’t started planning yet - there’s still time! But remember, Black Friday crosses many departments and internal hurdles can impact timeframes considerably. Start working with your internal stakeholders now to get your strategy moving forward.
Research
Before creating your new strategy, take a moment to reflect upon learnings from last year's performance to support this year’s planning. Looking back can give you an indication of which offers resonate with your audience, which publishers provided the best performance and give insight on competitor activity.
In the webinar Nichola discusses in detail different tools available and areas to review to help build insights across the following key areas:
- YoY Analysis - How did you perform? What worked? What didn’t?
- Partnership Analysis - Which partners had the strongest performance? What tenancies did you have in place?
- Competitor Analysis - What were your competitor offers? And what additional placements did they secure?
Define success
Black Friday weekend is the perfect opportunity to increase sales revenue, but what level of growth is success? Also consider other objectives such as inventory-focused or building brand awareness.
Defining clear success metrics helps to shape your strategy. Share these metrics internally with stakeholders and externally with agency and network partners. This ensures everyone is aligned and working towards a common goal.
Set your budget
Remember budget isn't just what is available for commissions, also consider tenancy payments and increased commission structures. There is a lot of noise over Black Friday so select key exposure opportunities to help your offer stand out.
Consult with the experts, Silverbean work closely with clients or your Commission Factory Account Manager will be able to help advise on level of budget to achieve your desired objectives.
Consider the full customer journey
Ensure you are maximising value from the entire affiliate mix with your strategy. Nichola shares insights on how to work closely with a range of publisher types across the customer journey to maximise performance on the day.
Different partner types will require different information to help promote your message effectively to their audience. Develop a communication strategy across key publisher types to ensure you are arming your partners with the tools they need to create a successful Black Friday campaign for your brand.
Monitor closely over the weekend
As Black Friday drives such strong demand over a condensed period, it is essential to monitor activity throughout the campaign.
Nichola shares some tips for monitoring performance on the actual day and how to react if things aren’t going to plan.
Some quick tips for checking activity on the day include:
- Check your offers are being promoted correctly
- Check landing pages and checkout process
- Monitor your premium partners’ contributions
- Ensure paid tenancies have been activated
- Conduct competitor research
- Review how competitive your offer is
- And keep an eye on community forums - they’ll let you know if something is wrong!
Following the strategy Silverbean share in the webinar creates a strong framework for Black Friday success to reduce pressures on the day. However, at such a critical time, all pressures cannot be removed completely - so be prepared to be flexible with your strategy to drive the results you need.
We hope this webinar provided some valuable insight into running a successful affiliate marketing campaign over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period.
Final thoughts
"Whether it is through your network account manager or an agency like Silverbean, it is important to leverage the experience and expertise of those supporting your affiliate programme to start the planning sooner rather than later. At Commission Factory, we are expecting bigger and better Black Friday results than last year and want to ensure all clients reach their goals."
Sophie Metcalfe, Commission Factory, Client Services Director